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Almost Home, San Francisco Peaks from I-40, November 2011
East of Flagstaff I swerved off the Interstate and parked on some godforsaken highway overpass. Big rigs and whiny little Toyota Prius cars doppler'ed past below me as I got out my camera. Never pass up an opportunity to photograph something beautiful, I always say.
Thanksgiving Cinder Cones, Coconino National Forest, November 2011
To my list of things to be thankful for this year I am going to add cinder cones at dawn.
I hope all you blog peeps from the United States had a happy Thanksgiving holiday.
Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, November 2011
The trail is long and steep and it unravels slowly through a forest of soughing pinyon pine and shaggy bark juniper, skirting past red-rock buttes until it deposits us at the creek bottom. Like many of Arizona's backcountry rivers this time of year there is no water, only a wilderness of polished river stones and encroaching thickets of arizona ash and sycamore. It is still fall at this low elevation and the trees' leaves glow a brilliant yellow. They are releasing back some of the summer sun before packing it in for the winter. I think it is their way of giving thanks for a growing season well spent.
Sycamore Creek, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, November 2011
We drop our packs and eat lunch among the stones. Afterwards we split up: he up some nameless side canyon, me downstream among the ankle-busters. The sycamores beckon me south and I explore the river course, slowly resolving my way around and over boulders, stepping carefully, aware of shifting centers of gravity and balance points, feeling the soles of my boots gripping the rock. It is an interesting sensation and I revel in its bright, shining immediacy, its ability to cut through all the left-brain crap of human consciousness and force one into the present.
Sycamore Creek, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, November 2011
I try to internalize the workings of the river basin, the sound of the wind in the pinyons above, the warmth of the sun, the feel of bones pivoting on ligament and of wondrous balance. I will use the memories of this place as an antidote to the deadly monotony of civilized life. When I am next trapped in traffic with a boom-car rumbling in the adjacent lane I'll hold these stones up as a talismanic shield.
Later I meet up with my hiking partner. I ask him what he saw in the side canyon and he is mysteriously reticent, offering scant clues. I should know better than to ask such things.
Sycamore Creek, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, November 2011
On the way out with the light getting low in the west we meet a woman with a very large dog. She is searching for a missing hiker, gone for a month now, presumed lost in the backcountry. She shows us a photograph of a smiling man. He could be anybody, any one of the many hikers I routinely meet on trails. We haven't seen him (or anyone else for that matter) and she moves on, possessed of a grim and hopeless kind of determination.
2001 Leroux Fire burn area, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, November 2011
Perhaps it is a truism and not worth writing, but sometimes even damaged places can be beautiful.
Trees and Fog, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, November 2011
Despite the rainy, gloomy weather I force myself out of the house and onto the Peaks. As the sun rises invisible behind gray clouds I explore the south face of the mountain, hoping to find a path that will grant snowshoe access to the high steeps of Agassiz and Fremont peaks. Instead I discover a plethora of strange, pathless routes leading into the deep folds and wrinkles of the mountain, all of them filled with gray, drifting shapes and wandering ghosts.
Trees and Fog, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, November 2011
Surrounded by thick forest and fog I glance back and see a figure standing motionless in the trees below me, just beyond the edge of the mist. I raise my hand in greeting, wondering who it could be this far up on the mountain. The fog retreats and the figure morphs into a log.
Ah, the mountain is playing tricks with my imagination. Sometimes she does that.
Trees and Fog, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, November 2011
I stop near 10,000 feet, having found the path I was looking for into the upper reaches. My legs, unused to climbing in snow, inform me that I should turn back. I can hear the mournful wail of the wind high above and a part of me yearns to continue on, to test the limits of my early season endurance, to walk among the bristlecones. For a long moment I stand there in the gently falling snow, listening to the sound of the mountain breathing. Finally I turn and descend, heading back to my truck parked far below.
Ponderosa pine branches against the sky, Coconino National Forest, November 2011
I ask for training and for my sins my employer ships me off to Las Vegas for a tech conference where, car-less, I spend five days in a very large, very clean, very expensive hotel listening to smart people lecture on all the latest trends in software development. The air conditioned conference rooms are full of 30 and 40 year-old programmers (mostly men, but there are a few women, too) who listen intently through countless powerpoints and screens of computer code.
We all smile and nod as if we understand what the presenters are saying. I watch my fellow software engineers closely and realize that, like me, they're all scared shitless by what's happening in the tech industry. We dutifully jot down snippets of code or Internet URLs into our laptops and iPads, but inside we're all wondering if the mobile Internet tsunami that's approaching will be the wave that finally washes us up onto the beach of greying irrelevance.
On the second day I bust out of the mega-hotel's sterile compressed air environment onto the Las Vegas strip in search of the sun and something beautiful to point my camera at. I photograph some of the buildings, walk the sidewalks, and try to wrap my head around this very strange place the gods of capitalism have built in the desert.
I see some homeless guys sitting on a pedestrian overpass. They wear enigmatic expressions on their faces and hold crude cardboard signs in their laps. "Need money for my kids" or "Unemployed - please help. God bless you." Shunned away from the others is another man holding a sign reading "I won't lie to you. I just need to get a whore."
I look at them and slowly realize that I've happened upon a tragic logic puzzle: which of the men is the real liar? Which, if any, of the men is deserving of a few dollars? There has to be some profound statement in this arrangement, some penetrating insight into the human condition, but the noise of the traffic is too distracting for subtle thinking and I walk on, feeling guilty - and a little stupid - that I couldn't see the solution.
The next morning I see a man dressed in jogging attire talking animatedly with something inside one of the ubiquitous garbage cans. I assume he is talking on a bluetooth headset to someone who is not present. But then I notice that his sweatpants are soiled and he is obviously not a tourist out for an early jog. When he departs I consider looking inside the trash can to see who (or what) he was speaking with, but chicken out. Perhaps it was the Las Vegas version of Oscar the Grouch, someone best left alone.
Farther along I notice that the walkway is covered with what looks like leaves. Groundskeepers from nearby hotels glide along on humming sweepers, swirling and pushing the leaves this way and that. They leave long slimy trails behind them like giant snails. When I get closer I discover that it is not leaves they are sweeping up, but rather playing-card sized advertisements for escort services. On the tiny squares of cardboard are printed pornographic pictures and telephone numbers: asians, barely legal, big tits, small tits. I resist the insane urge to shuffle and kick my feet through the cards, as I did just a week prior in the freshly fallen aspen leaves of the Kachina Peaks Wilderness.
Later I sip Starbucks coffee and eat a banana that I paid way too much for. In this drought-stricken land I stand near acres of water, complete with fountains that jet into the air every few minutes across the surface in sequence. The jets of water dance and whirl across the man-made lake, culminating in a big finale with all the spouts shooting water up into the air together. I think they filmed a scene from Ocean's 11 here, but I'm not sure. The lone mallard duck bobbing along the edge of the water is no help. Apparently he is not a George Clooney fan.
A woman dressed in a sharp suit with a name tag from one of the nearby mega-hotels stomps by. She screams "I AM NOT UNREASONABLE I AM NOT UNREASONABLE I AM NOT UNREASONABLE!!!!" into her cell phone. I look at the mallard and he rolls his eyes.
It's dark and huge mega-hotels covered with neon and glass tower above me. Crowds of tourists speaking Japanese and German and French and even some English pack the sidewalks. They all have camera phones, which they use incessantly. I take a few photographs of the glowing buildings against the twilight, practicing motion blur techniques with the moving traffic. I feel like I've stepped into the dystopic movie Blade Runner.
Three of us from the conference meet at a mexican restaurant for drinks and dinner. It is our last night in Vegas and the conference is over; tomorrow we head home. A trio of mariachis play a quirky cover of the Eagles' "Hotel California" and I watch the 30-something waitress working the tables. When she thinks no one is looking her perky smile fades and is replaced by a look of infinite weariness. She is unbearably beautiful.
It has been a long week and the beer hits me hard, buzzing its way straight to my brain.
And then, sitting there in the noise and hustle of the restaurant it comes to me: The homeless men on the bridge were playing at a variant of the Liar's Paradox, and thus, there was no solution to their little game at all.
Two Ace Tank, Coconino National Forest, November 2011
We got our first real snow of the season last night here in Flagstaff. It looks to be only about two or three inches here on the west side. It's not enough to snowshoe or ski on and it's rapidly melting as the day progresses, but it's a start.
Instead of sleeping in I hiked down one of the new Flagstaff Loop Trail sections and caught the tail end of magic hour near a place called Two Ace Tank. Most times Two Ace is a rather unremarkable stock tank that rarely holds water for long, hosts little wildlife, and has ugly, deeply cut mountain bike trails along one side that turn to gooey mud every time it rains. I've been there many times over the years, mostly passing through on my way to the Arizona Trail and points beyond. But this morning the fresh snow gave it an enchanting quality that made me stop to observe the shifting light, fast scudding clouds, and biting cold breeze. As I forced my frozen fingers to trip the shutter release on my camera I realized that the blasé had become beautiful.
Aspen grove information sign, October 2011
The road to Lockett Meadow was open for less than a month when I noticed that people had already started defacing the aspen trees along the Inner Basin trail again. Sad. Makes me wish I could place a few carefully worded aspen conservation signs along the trail.
Jet Intrusion, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, October 2011
